


Collection of Alternate Universe Drabbles

by GraveVyxen



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Fantastic Four (Movies 2005-2007), Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Once Upon a Time (TV), Robin Hood (BBC 2006), Young Hercules
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Going Away to War, Alternate Universe - Knocking on the Wrong Door, Alternate Universe - Meeting in the ER, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Alternate Universe - Partners In Crime, Alternate Universe - Pretending to Hate Each Other, Alternate Universe - Tourist and Guide, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-08 15:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3213680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraveVyxen/pseuds/GraveVyxen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In response to the 'Alternate Universe' meme, a small collection of my drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Johnny Storm/Blaine - Knocking on the Wrong Door AU

Blaine almost lobbed his pillow at the door when the knocking started. He refrained only because it was the only pillow on his bed, and he really didn’t want to lose it to the floor. He didn’t feel much like getting out from under the warm covers of his bed when the air in his room was so chilled. Now if only whoever was outside of his door would just… “Shut the fuck up!” the Ski Patrol leader shouted.

The knocking went quiet for a few long moments. Blaine was sure that whoever it was that wanted his attention this badly must have gone by now. He rolled over with a satisfied snort and sprawled once more.

That’s when the knocking began again, more insistently than before.

Blaine nearly let out a scream in his frustration as he kicked aside his blankets, stomping over to wrench the door practically off of its hinges. His sleep-bleary eyes took a few moments to focus. What he saw made him grit his teeth. “Can I help you, Storm?”

Johnny Storm, all bright blue eyes and buzzed blonde hair, shirtless with sagging pajama bottoms, looked more awake than Blaine was sure should be legal at this hour. “Oops, sorry. I was…” He smirked a little. “Well, you know, Gina and I, we were just playing a little game of…strip hide and seek. And she’s about to lose.” He waved a hand at his body. “And I’m just trying to…”

Blaine rolled his eyes. “Well, she’s sure as shit not in here.” He assured, annoyed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He was hindered from slamming the door in the new boy’s face by a hand, holding it fast. “Do you mind?”

Johnny leaned forward. “Can I take a look? It’ll only take a minute.” Without waiting for an answer, he stepped into Blaine’s space, pushing his way into the room. The guy had only been on the patrol team for a day, only been in the area for three, tops. He had a lot of nerve bothering Blaine like this.

Blaine wanted to push the other man away. He wanted to tell him to get the hell out, but refrained, if only because, maybe letting him look around would get rid of him faster. With that thought in mind, he headed back to his bed, mindful suddenly of the fact that his boxer briefs covered very little of him, and what they did cover, they didn’t really hide. He crawled back under the covers with a yawn and closed his eyes. “Close the door on the way out.”

Johnny made an affirmative noise and moved around the room. Blaine was only half-listening as he began to doze while Johnny looked around for Gina.

He almost didn’t notice that the door was closed, but Johnny hadn’t left, until he heard the other man’s soft voice, very close to him, whisper, “Is this spot taken?”

And Blaine couldn’t tell you why he shook his head no, or why he chose to curl up into Johnny when he’d climbed into the cool bed, except to defend that Johnny’s body  _was_  weirdly warm, weirdly comfortable to rest his head on, and then it hit him.

Gina had left the resort  _yesterday_.


	2. Clint/Natasha - Online Dating AU

Clint nearly spit out the mouthful of lukewarm coffee that he’d tipped into his mouth when he realized that, from his ignoring it, had grown cool. He instead brought the mug back to his lips and spit it back in, setting it aside and rubbing his eyes. He chanced a glance at the clock and winced. 4:47 am. He’d told himself that he wouldn’t be up after midnight this time. He’d made a promise.  But here he was, sitting in front of his laptop, like every other night this week. This month. Why was he intentionally doing this to himself?

The computer dinged at that moment and Clint felt a smile forming on his lips. Oh, yes…that was why.

Her name was Natalie. She was perfect. Smart, direct…and on the other side of the country.

He’d known her first by her screen name. BlackWidow. That should’ve worried him, but, then again, he always loved the taste of danger. They’d met on a dating site, and things had only become more intense as their conversations wore on. Clint felt that he knew her better than he’d known any woman in his life. And he had never even seen her face.

There was no doubt in his mind that she was likely a beautiful woman. But it was the way she typed to him, the drive behind her words, the way her personality came through in the emails she sent, that had reeled him in.

He’d given her a false name behind his screen name (Hawkeye). She called him ‘Ronin’ in her emails and, now, he almost wished he’d told her his real name.

Clint continued to email her until he finally fell asleep, with his laptop still on, in the early hours of the morning, only to be woken too soon by his alarm for another day at the office. He couldn’t, however, stop himself from checking one last email in his inbox before he raced out of his house.

'Oh, Ronin, I forgot, I booked a plane ticket to New York for a week to visit family. I hope you want to meet up as much as I do. I get in tomorrow. Meet me for dinner? Maybe around 6?'

Included as a closing was her cell phone number and the address of a restaurant. It was only a few blocks down from his office, and Clint could hardly contain himself when he emailed her back an affirmative.

His day at work was slow, so terribly slow, when all he could think about was his date that night. Clint was so distracted on his way out that he almost collided with one of the top bosses in one of the offices down the hall. She swept her long, red hair back and bustled past him with a pointed look as she boarded the elevator. She’d always made him feel inferior whenever she passed by him in the hallway. Ms. Natasha Romanov, CEO of her own self-made company. She must earn five times what he did.

Realizing only at that moment that he’d missed the elevator, Clint turned instead for the stairs, jogging down them to the bottom just as Ms. Romanov’s high heels clicked around the back of a red sports car. She climbed inside and drove away.

Clint’s way of travel was less refined. He walked quickly down the sidewalk toward the restaurant, peeling off his sport coat along the way and hoping to whoever was listening that the sweat he could feel running down his back wouldn’t be obvious to the woman he was going to meet.

He gave the name ‘Natalie Rushman’ to the hostess, and was led to a table near the back. Sitting, hidden behind the menu, was a red-haired woman, the waves of copper flowing over strong shoulders. Clint slid in across from her with a grin. “Sorry I’m late. Work kept me a little long.”

Imagine his surprise when the menu came down, and none other than Natasha Romanov sat in the other occupied chair. She looked nearly as flustered by him as he was by she. “Ronin?

"Natalie?"


	3. Jason/Iolaus - Tourist/Knowledgeable Local AU

Jason wished he hadn’t asked his father to let him explore Athens alone. He couldn’t help but be bored of the business trip he’d been dragged on, sure, but he was pretty sure that the map that the receptionist at the hotel had given him was written in gibberish. He was also pretty sure that he’d been walking in circles for the last hour. He tossed the useless piece of paper to the ground, running his fingers through sweaty, short locks.

"Hey, there. Need a hand?" A voice startled the young man, prompting him to jump and turn around. Standing behind Jason, straddling a white scooter with a large grin on his tanned face, was another man, not much younger than himself. His long, wavy blonde hair was tied loosely at the nape of his neck. He wore no shirt, only board shorts and flip flops.

Jason took a step back and bent down to grab his map. His brow furrowed. “I’m fine.” He muttered, wiping at his sweat-damp forehead and absently flapping the hem of his tee-shirt to air out his warm skin. “Just a little lost, is all.”

The other man grinned and put down the kickstand of his scooter. “I can help with that.” He replied quietly. “Where are you looking to go?”

Jason took a step back when the blonde leaned over his map with him. “I was headed to the beach.” He replied hastily.

"What a coincidence! So am I!" The man stood up straight again, his full height still just a touch shorter than Jason. "The name’s Iolaus. I can take you with me, if you want." He reached out a hand to shake Jason’s. "What do you say? Wanna hop on my scooter and take a ride? I can try and help you with that map later."

Jason glanced at the offered hand and hesitated before shaking it. “Sure.” He finally replied. He blushed for only a moment when he straddled the scooter behind Iolaus at the young man’s prompting for the duration of the ride to the white sand. He found himself holding around Iolaus’ tanned waist with both arms before they’d finally stopped, and the grin the man gave him showed that he didn’t mind one bit.

What he also, apparently, didn’t mind was finding his way back to Jason’s hotel room after hours of tanning, swimming, and talking on the beach until the sun had gone down. And Jason  _really_  didn’t mind finding the blonde still in his bed the next morning. But that didn’t mean he would be telling his dad at breakfast when he was asked how his first solo day went.

Because he didn’t plan on spending any more days without his lovely young tour guide.


	4. Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes - Pretending to Hate Each Other AU

Steve nearly groaned aloud when the classroom door opened up in the middle of the professor’s lecture. He hated it enough when their class time was interrupted as it was. What made it worse was the young man that tried to slip into a desk in the back unnoticed. He shot the intruder a glare, and wasn’t surprised when he saw who it was. Bucky Barnes. Bucky, who was nearly always tardy to the classes they shared. Bucky, who was always so obnoxiously uninterested in classes. Bucky, who he’d had a crush on since he’d first seen him in class.

But of course, he didn’t want Bucky to know that. And it didn’t really hurt that his problem with Bucky stemmed from the rudeness the man had displayed the first time they’d interacted, when he’d spat on the ground at Steve’s feet, only missing his shoes by a hair, before turning away without an apology.

And it wasn’t like Steve was the only one. He’d caught Bucky glaring at him more than once from the back row of desks, in the hallway of the dorms. He didn’t understand what the other man had against him, but he didn’t like it. He only reciprocated the energy that Bucky sent out towards him.

Steve spent the rest of class with teeth clenched. Barnes, somewhere behind him, was chewing gum loudly, snapping it and distracting Steve from his work. He finally decided, today, after class, he’d give that little shit a piece of his mind.

Which is why he found himself in the corridor between buildings, where students came to smoke, frowning, when Bucky strode past him without a glance, but not without bumping their shoulders together. No apology came from that, either, and Steve was fed up. He might not have been muscular like Barnes, nor tall, or any of those things, but he had the spirit of a much larger man inside of him. Moving directly into Bucky’s space, surprising both himself and Barnes, he glared. “What is your  _problem_?” was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

Bucky, for his part, seemed surprised with Steve’s boldness. Skinny little Steve, whose asthma interrupted classes, who spent so little time with other students and so much time on his own, whose blue eyes had kept Bucky up more than once trying to recreate the color in his mind when he laid in bed. “What do you mean?” He replied coolly, taking a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket. He rested it just inside his lips.

Steve glared. “You know what I mean! Why do you  _hate_  me so much?” He didn’t know what to say to Bucky, how to react, with the anger built up inside him.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Who the hell said I hate you?” The brunette blushed at that statement and looked away.

"Well, you obviously fucking do!" Steve couldn’t even reign in his language, as he normally could, when he was frustrated. "Always giving me dirty looks, running into me, what is your problem?"

"I don’t have a problem!" Bucky looked uncomfortable. "I just, I don’t know." He scuffed the side of his boot on the ground. "Maybe it’s because I fucking like you, okay?" The man finally blurted out, not looking at Steve. "I’m going to class." Putting his unsmoked cigarette back into the box, he turned and hurried off in the other direction.

Steve was taken aback by Bucky’s admission and faltered, finally falling into a small coughing fit from the surrounding smoke of other students. He began to head slowly in the same direction as Barnes, wondering what other secrets he might be keeping.


	5. Jefferson/Regina - Going Away to War AU

"I’ll be back." He said.

"Don’t worry." He said.

"It will only be for a little while." He said.

Why, then, was she still alone, six months later, with naught but a few letters to tell her that he was still alive?

Regina shivered despite herself, sitting alone in her bedroom, in her wing of her husband’s castle. She nearly scoffed at the thought. Her husband. That was a laugh. A man she rarely saw in a castle that housed so many. She was lucky if she managed to find a common space to share with anyone outside of her own servants.

But the letters, hidden in a locked box in the drawer of her vanity, they were all that remained these last six months of the man she truly loved, the man her husband had sent to war. Knights, peasants, no one was safe from drafting.

The final letter had come two months prior, and nothing since. She was starting to lose hope. What if he hadn’t survived? What if something terrible had happened to him?

After all, Jefferson wasn’t a soldier. He was a hat maker. A very skilled hat maker, in the marketplace of town, but still, a hat maker nonetheless. He was not a natural-born fighter.

Regina missed him fiercely.

She missed the fire in his eyes when he entered her room. His soft voice but rough hands. The way he took his time stripping her of her queenly wardrobe, of her jewels; the way he took her hair down until it cascaded in dark curls over her shoulders. She missed his body lined up against hers and the way he insisted on sleeping, curled around her, until the morning light shone into the windows before he’d finally sneak away to start his day.

She missed Jefferson. And she cursed every day that her husband’s war kept him away.

As she looked out into the night, Regina’s eyes found the brightest star in the dark sky, the one her father always called the ‘wishing star’, and began to wonder if he was right. If the star really did hold magic, if it could grant wishes.

Because she could really use one right now.

Her eyes slid closed and Regina found herself wishing, wishing in a way she hadn’t since she was very small. She let her mind whisper her desires to the stars, until she could not wish any more.

Wearily, the queen finally entered her downy bed, where she curled up to sleep. She was startled awake by the dip of her mattress. Arms encircled her body, and she turned to fight off the other, before a familiar voice calmed her.

"It’s me. I told you I’d be back." A soft chuckle punctuated the statement. "And I thought you’d be happy."

Her bleary eyes cleared, and she nearly recoiled in surprise. “Jefferson?”

The man nodded, grinning, and his arms tightened. One of his eyes was bruised, swollen closed, and she noticed a slightly discolored bandage covering his left shoulder. When Jefferson caught her eyes again, he gave a small grin. “I’m alright. I promise.” He murmured. “Now, how about we get a little bit of sleep? I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since I left you.”

Regina tried to nod, still overwhelmed and confused at his sudden arrival, but she chose to put that aside for the morning. Instead of dwelling, she moved more securely into his warmth and drifted off to sleep. For the first time in six months, she fell asleep with a smile on her face.


	6. Ivan Vanko/Tony Stark - Partners in Crime AU

Ivan leaned over Tony's back, looking into the computer screen with a frown. "You use wrong coding." He muttered. His hands came around Tony's front, knocking aside the other man's from the keyboard. "Let me do. Is my virus." His Russian accent thickened as he lost himself in the typing.

Tony let out a groan. "Yeah, a virus that _I_ perfected! Your coding was flawed. I fixed it." He tried to push at the muscular, tattooed arms that entrapped him. "You don't know what you're doing, Vanko, let me do it."

"Your coding not right." Ivan returned without budging. "You make us traceable. I keep us hidden." He instigated the virus before Tony could fiddle with it again, much to Tony's chagrin. "There."

"My coding made it unstoppable!" Tony watched as the numbers on the screen multiplied.  "So, what, you're getting the cash in our account, but they're gonna figure out that they're being jipped pretty quick. They'll shut us down."

Ivan grinned. "But will not trace. Safer."

"We could get more with a little risk..." Tony nearly whined. "Watch, they'll shut us down in five...four..." He was distracted from continuing his countdown by Ivan's mouth on his own. He grunted, but reached for a handful of grey and white hair.

Ivan spun Tony's computer chair to face him, lifting the genius out of it easily and taking his spot, with Tony straddling his lap. He began to bite at Tony's ear and neck. "Shh...have not been shut down." He motioned at the screen, where the numbers continued to climb. "Safe."

Tony grumbled softly and tilted his head to give the other man better access to his neck. "Yeah, yeah, okay, so...maybe you were right. Whatever." He reached over to close the program when they found themselves with a sizable sum of money. "Next time, I get to write the virus."

Ivan smirked. "And I will rewrite." He teased before leaning in for another hasty kiss. "Now, dinner?"


	7. Guy of Gisborne/Marian of Knighton - Partners in Crime AU

Guy grinned the moment that the car door opened and Marian swept inside, thunking down a heavy, brown leather bag between them. He didn't even wait for her to fully close the door before he peeled off from the sidewalk. He knew the police would be in pursuit before too long, and he wanted to put as much distance between them and those cars as possible.

Once they'd cleared the city line, headed onto a backroad, only then did Guy begin to slow, did he risk conversation once more. "How much?" He turned with a smile.

Marian laughed, setting her bare feet up on the dashboard. "Quite enough to make it comfortably." She replied, reaching into the bag to pull out a stack of hundreds. "Unmarked bills. The bank didn't even know what hit them." She turned to smile back at him.

Guy reached over to rest a hand on her thigh. "That's because you're quite the threat, Marian." He murmured. "With a sawed-off and high heels."

Marian leaned across the console, cupping Guy's jaw. "I learned from the best." She replied before distracting him from the road momentarily with a deep kiss.

Guy kept one hand on the wheel, but let his eyes drift closed. One eye cracked open just as she pulled away, and he cursed before swerving back to the middle of the lane. "Careful when you distract me." He muttered, squeezing her thigh. "You're liable to get us both killed."

Marian let out another loud, clear laugh. She leaned back into her seat. "You wouldn't mind dying that way."

Guy couldn't help but smile at that. "With your lips on mine?" He asked, faking thoughtfulness. "No, no, I guess I wouldn't."


	8. Ivan Vanko/Tony Stark - Meeting in the ER AU

Tony winced when the bright fluorescent lights came into view, past the double doors, down the hallway. He was only distantly aware of a throbbing ache in his head, of blood dripping down his temple and into his eyes. He caught the words 'crash' and 'concussion' and 'another' from the medical team rushing him into the hospital before he found himself drifting out of consciousness.

He hardly noticed the second stretcher behind his own, being wheeled into a neighboring exam room.

It was hours later, after being assessed, bandaged, and stabilized that Tony was blinking awake in a too-bright recovery room. He spied the IV in his arm, felt the cast on his wrist, and cursed the bandages around his skull that were causing a _very_ annoying itching sensation on his forehead. He'd crashed his favorite sports car, he remembered now. Into a motorcycle.

A cough alerted him to another presence in a room he had expected to be private. Tony turned to the side to see a pair of feet on a second bed. One of them only had toes visible before a cast, elevated, worked its way to the knee, where it was attached with a hinge to a second cast, that covered a thigh.

Someone here was worse off, Tony mused, as he took in the expanse of medical binding on the other body. Both arms in casts, a neck brace. This guy hadn't made it out as easily as Tony had. And one glance at the chair by the other bed had Tony sucking in a rough breath. A motorcycle helmet, the whole back of it scraped flat by what the billionaire could only assume was concrete, or asphalt.

They put him in the same room as the guy he'd hit. Now, if that didn't make him think twice about getting behind the wheel again...

A groan from the other man made Tony's attention snap back to the bed. Guilt pooled in his gut. He'd never felt guilty before, not like this. "Hey..." His voice cracked as he tried to break the silence that had suddenly gotten too loud for him to bear.

"Think too loudly." A low voice, accented, Russian, reached Tony's ears. Great, he'd not only nearly killed a guy, but it was a foreigner. Someone that probably had never navigated the roads in Malibu. Someone that didn't know about the terrible driving skills of Californians. As if he didn't already feel guilty as all hell.

Tony looked away. "Sorry..." He muttered.

The other man said nothing for a long while, long enough for the silence to reach unbearable levels again, long enough for Tony to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. "Crash." Finally, the Russian spoke again. "No insurance."

Tony bit into his tongue at that. "It wasn't your fault." He didn't know why he was being so nice. He figured it must have something to do with the fact that the hospital had forced them together. It was like the doctors knew that meeting the man he'd hurt, he'd almost killed, would make him feel like he owed something to someone. "Listen, it's on me, I..." He groaned at the idea of what he was about to say. "I've got your bills."

There was another silence before the voice came again. "Who you?"

"Stark. Tony." Tony replied, still watching the other form on the bed beside his. "And you?"

"Vanko." The other man said. "Ivan Vanko."

"Well, Ivan...looks like we'll be seeing a lot of each other in the near future."


	9. John Diggle/Oliver Queen - College AU

"You know, a little studying would do you good." John muttered from his desk.

Oliver let out a short laugh, reaching into his bowl of popcorn with one hand, pausing his video game with the other. "But where's the fun in that?" He asked cheekily.

"The fun is not getting kicked out of school." John replied, annoyed, as he leaned away from his computer and rubbed his eyes. "Because, you know, that would be bad."

"Eh," Oliver shrugged. He finished his handful of popcorn before going back to his game. "Says who?"

John rolled his eyes. "You know what? Nevermind. Go ahead and flunk out." He went back to his paper. "I'm done trying to convince you to do school. If you're not out partying, you're in here rotting your brain. I'm tired of trying." He was quiet for a moment. "It's on you now, Oliver."

Oliver paused his game again and looked over to John. "My God, you're a wet blanket, Dig, you know that?" His serious tone was betrayed by the way his lips curled up at the edges. "I mean, you could always come with me to the parties, but you always have some kind of excuse." He motioned to the television with one hand. "Or you could challenge me to a game."

John quirked an eyebrow. "Are you really asking me to play video games with you when we've got a paper due in two days?" He asked, nearly sarcastically, as he stood from his chair. "'Cause it sounds like you're asking me to play video games instead of writing my paper."

Oliver shrugged and smirked. "But, I mean, if you just think you'll  _lose_ , you can keep playing the good student role. No skin off my nose." He turned as if to go back to his game, watching John from the corner of his eye.

John almost looked as though he was going to sit back down, ignore the challenge in Oliver's tone, and keep writing, but then, he took two strides closer to the couch. "How about a bet?"

Now it was Oliver's turn to raise an eyebrow. "A bet? Dig, you never struck me as the betting type!" He turned to face his roommate excitedly. "What are the stakes?"

John gave his own grin at that. "How about this...if you win, I'll back off. I won't tell you to do any school work and I won't say anything about what you do in your free time."

"Sounds good to me. And if I lose? Not that I will, but just to be fair..." Oliver teased, smirking.

"If you lose..." John's smile widened, "you start putting more of your effort into school. You finish your assignments. And you don't complain."

Oliver seemed a little taken aback, but he didn't protest as he stuck out a hand to shake. "Deal."

"Deal." John echoed as they shook on it and grabbed for the extra controller. "Now, let's get this started, eh?"

Imagine Oliver's surprise when, an hour and seven games later, John had beaten him not once, but five times. He'd figured the first to be a fluke, the second, too, and relished in what he considered his comeback in the next two games before his roommate proceeded to smoke him in the next three rounds. His mouth fell open when he'd managed to lose once more. "How in the hell...?" He'd muttered when John moved to turn off the system and unplug the controllers to lock them up in his desk. "How did you...?"

John grinned, turning away from the drawer to pocket the key when he was finished putting away the controllers. "I might've done a little competitive video gaming back in my high school days." He shrugged and tossed a book to Oliver. "Now, I think we made a little wager. Need some help with that studying?"

Oliver made a face that could only be described as pouting as he opened the book. "That was such a crock of shit." He muttered before setting to reading.

John let out a small chuckle and went back to his computer. He was surprised to find himself finishing his paper in the quiet of the room two hours later. Sitting back, he turned to watch Oliver struggle to read through the long chapter of the textbook.

"This would be easier with a little positive reinforcement, you know." The blonde said as he turned a page, obviously feeling John's eyes on him.

John laughed and moved to sit on the couch next to his roommate. "Yeah? And how might I do that?"

Oliver glanced up at him. "I dunno, my high school tutor used to kiss me whenever I got an answer right." He teased. "But, then again, she had a crush on me. And she was a lot more...my type." His eyes moved up and down John's body quickly before he turned back to the book. "I don't think it'd work this time around."

"Oh, really?" John asked, quirking a brow. He very nearly pointed out the looks he'd seen Oliver give him, every once in a while, when he thought John hadn't been looking. That lingering, appraising look. Something most people wouldn't notice, but John was a psychology major, and all of his teachers told him he had a way of reading people.

He knew that, as much as Oliver might deny it, he found John very much attractive. It wasn't so much that he wasn't interested, it seemed, as it was that he was channeling his hyper-masculinity to keep from being the target of rumors. At least, rumors that would make him ashamed rather than an object of female lust and male jealousy.

But, maybe...no, he couldn't. John felt a small smirk on his face and snatched away the book.

"Hey!" Oliver grabbed for it. "I was reading that!"

John leaned away, holding the book above his head. "Pop quiz time." He replied, flipping back a page. "I need to make sure you were actually reading and not just pretending until I went to sleep."

Oliver frowned and sat back. "...fine. Ask away." He waved a hand. "I was reading. I can promise you that."

John's eyes searched the page for a moment to find something he could form into a question. "Ah, okay, so...what's the function of the frontal lobe?" He smiled.

Oliver glanced toward the floor, looking deep in thought. "I know this...I just read this..." He closed his eyes. "The frontal lobe...the frontal lobe is responsible for...not creative thinking, it's...motor skills!" He looked pleased with himself. "Motor skills, that's it."

John nodded. "Correct. How about a harder one?" He scanned the page once more and cleared his throat. "How about the hypothalamus?"

"Fuck, that's...that's the one that they said was eating and drinking and stuff like that, right?" Oliver's answer surprised John in its correctness. Maybe this kid wasn't as spacey as he thought when it came to learning. Oliver seemed to absorb information easily.

"That's right." John replied proudly, and smiled at the smug look on Oliver's face. "One more. What's the function of the motor cortex?" He let his eyes drift to the blonde's lips when his tongue flicked out to wet them, thinking once more of his teasing.

"The motor cortex..." Oliver started, glancing upward in thought, "controls the voluntary muscles."

"Correct." John said, quietly, setting the book down on the table. "You're three for three."

Oliver smirked. "Told you I don't need to study."

"Maybe not." John agreed. "But you said you wanted some positive reinforcement. Well..." He steeled himself for it before leaning forward, pressing his lips to Oliver's, the way he'd wanted to since the handsome, conceited little shit came strolling into the room they'd spend the next year sharing.

Oliver let out a noise of confusion, almost leaning away before melting into the kiss, one hand finding the back of John's neck and holding on. He deepened it quite quickly. His tongue slipped between John's lips and teeth.

John, not to be outdone, kissed back just as deeply, intent on taking Oliver's breath away.

They parted only when neither of them could stand the lack of oxygen much longer. Oliver gave a small grin. "If I'd have known all I had to do was spout some psychology bullshit to get in your pants, I'd have done it a long time ago."

John snorted and pulled Oliver in again. "Don't push your luck, Queen." He kissed the other man again. "You haven't gotten in my pants."

"Ah..." It was Oliver's turn to pull away this time, "but, you see, the night's not over yet."


End file.
